we come from the land of the ice and snow
by anankes
Summary: Yuki-onna, they called her. Ice woman. -Lorelei


**.: we come from the land of the ice and snow :.**

_we come from the land of the ice and snow  
__from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow_

* * *

When she was young, Lorelei's mother, a woman with hair as white as snow, told her a saying she would remember for the rest of your life.

"Know yourself before you know your enemies," she said, her fingers flying over a piece of knitting, the bone-white needles clacking and their breath frosting the arctic winter. "Because only when you understand your heart will you have the knowledge to perceive the intents of those who would wish you harm."

She stopped and gave Lorelei a stern look. "You are powerful, my girl. You are a daughter of the winter. Everything you need to carve out a life for yourself can already be found in the snow. It is only buried deep; you just need to look more carefully."

* * *

At the age of nine, she witnessed her first kill.

Until then, her mother had shielded her for such events until she was deemed of the appropriate age. Now, as she neared the age of ten and began slipping off the memories of childhood, she was taken along on one of the village hunts to see how her people wielded the ice and fashioned weapons from the beasts that dwelt in the cold seas.

She saw one of the village tribesmen bark out a harsh command in their guttural language, and his companion, a Cloyster, cackled and sent out a volley of wickedly sharp spikes from within the clutches of its shell. Its target, a dewy-white Seel barely a week old, squealed and tried to dodge, but it was not fast enough. The spears pierced its skin and blood flowed out, warm at first (like fire) but then cooling as the chilly winds whipped around them.

Along with the other village children, she ran towards it to get a piece of the best meat before the others could. Her diligence was rewarded by one of the cooking-women handing her the Seel's heart, slick with blood and meaty and rich.

She ate and breathed.

* * *

Her own kill followed soon after, when she was thirteen years old and considered a proper woman by the standards of their clan.

She found a Shellder, weak and beached on an ice floe drifting near their shores. Mercilessly, she ordered her mother's Dewgong to use Ice Beam on it. The creature complied, shooting a jet of glacial energy from its lips and striking the Shellder in the tender, unprotected part of its face, causing its internal body heat to drop rapidly and killing it on contact.

With a knife, she cleared the ice away from the beasts mouth and stared at its dead eyes, taking in the moment.

When she presented the kill to her mother, the older woman merely nodded and told her to ready it for supper.

* * *

She was twenty when she killed a man.

He came and set fire to their camps with his dragons and fire-monsters, laughing while their tents burned and their children screamed and their elders sobbed. He did so without remorse.

She saw the tent where her mother lived going up in flames, consumed until it was only ashes and her mother as well, and her eyes were wide and full of tears.

As the laughing fire-man left, she struck him down with an arrow. It pierced his neck, and the strange contraptions with which he corrupted the beasts (a tiny red-and-white prison) fell from his stiffening fingers and into the ocean. Her mother's Dewgong fired off an Aurora Beam, frigid lights splashing onto his back and turning his skin white and pushing him in even further. The man toppled into the water after his contraptions and did not rise.

His monsters fled and she never saw them again.

* * *

She cried bitter tears that night. Tears that cooled on her cheeks and turned into crystalline beads of ice, tears that burned her eyes as she sobbed. There was smoke and ash all around her, lingering embers, and the bodies of her people, everything gone and nothing surviving.

(It was then that she found her weakness was fire, and oh, how she loathed it)

The next day, she left the village to leave it all behind her. She brought with her only the faithful Dewgong, the clothes on her back, and food with which to make her trek into land.

She was carving out a new life from the ice and snow.

* * *

But she never forgot.

Never.

* * *

And she found many more men of his nature, men who liked to burn and raze for the fun of it all, men who were cruel tyrants and men who were demons who wore human flesh.

She killed them all, as she had seen the tribesman kill the Seel and as she had killed the Shellder.

She cut out their bleeding hearts as the cooking-woman had done and ate them.

They quickly froze in her cold hands.

* * *

_Yuki-onna_, some called her. _Ice woman._

She found something attractive in the title and took it on when she came onstage. They called her many more names, but she found _Yuki-onna_ to be the one she liked best.

* * *

Now, her eyes hardened into chips of ice, she bore down upon her next challenger. Her team fell upon him like the sudden blizzards in the mountains, turning his monsters into frost and water and crushing him utterly; he was a broken boy, feet kneeling and head bowed.

And even as he lay bleeding and terrified and humiliated, she would not stop. With a wave of her hand, her Pokemon howled and hissed and loosed incredible gales of ice and snow, blinding him and blowing him backwards, making him scream until the saliva in his mouth had frozen and his screaming made his lips bleed and it was the high, keening wail of a siren. Blizzards streamed from all around her and wreathed him in a cloak of white, blanketing the battlefield and turning his skin blue and then black, the cells dying and his flesh withering as the onslaught continued.

When his bones became as brittle as ice, when his skin was dried paper, when his eyes were big and wide and unseeing, she pressed a hand to his chest.

His heart was not beating.

* * *

What is hidden in snow comes forth in the thaw.

She learned this all too well.

* * *

On her throne in the League, Lorelei sat and stared down at an empire of ice, of snow that had melted too quickly and of people frozen in glaciers, waiting for the thaw to free them again.

She watches and waits for them to return.


End file.
